


and so they are painted on canvas

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:06:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>if the boys of One Directions were colors, they would be black, yellow, brown, white, and blue</p>
            </blockquote>





	and so they are painted on canvas

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Namalowani](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051485) by [carietta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carietta/pseuds/carietta)



Harry - Harry is white. Harry is white not only for the paleness of his throat but also for the hope that adorns his sleeve in the shape of his heart, aorta pumping blood for the world to see and wonder at. Harry has to be white, because if he’s not white, he doesn’t have the hope that binds him to Louis, the hope that is able to withstand the burdensome gravity that falls upon their shoulders. White is the noise that exists in the room when Harry’s eyes fall on Louis’s and the world fades away to nothing, because the world has no place in LouisandHarry. Louis represents white for Harry, represents hope. White is also the color of Harry’s confidence, untarnished by the stain of our normative assumptions, untainted by that which we place on the shoulders of young children: hate and greed and selfishness. Those things are absent in Harry and so Harry is white. 

Louis - Louis is blue. Not only for his eyes, but for the cracks in his armor. Blue is everyone’s favorite color and yet we say we are blue when we are miserable and so blue is a contradiction, as is Louis. You say ‘Louis is sassy’ and yet we have Louis’s grace and his elegance and his love for his family (and his love for Harry). The surface of Louis is the favorite, the blue that is everyone’s color. Everyone loves Louis, he is laughs and sparkle and wit and childishness but he remains the favorite. And yet those who understand him, those who see those cracks, those who appreciate the blue for what it is, a color that is seemingly a societal miserable thing, will know who Louis is, will know the vulnerability that is manifested in his ‘sass’, will know the insecurity that binds him irrevocably to the puppy-like love of Harry. You may say Louis is yellow, because he is the sun, and he is Harry’s sun, but he is your blue because he is your favorite and yet you don’t know him at all. 

Niall - Niall is yellow. He is yellow because unlike Louis, who is only one person’s sun, Niall is the sun for everyone. Niall is consistent and loyal. He may go over your horizon, but he comes up on someone else’s and so he is always at someone’s side, for whoever needs his sunshine most. Niall is yellow because he is brash, because he is unassuming and uncaring, in the most beautiful meaning of the word. Yellow goes with everything, it is attractive paired with every color, as Niall fits with everyone and exists in the space next to you with perfect ease. Niall is yellow because you can’t help but be blinded when you look at him, and yet we need him to survive. Who would this band of lost boys be without Niall, without their sun? They would not be who they are because they need Niall, because Liam may be the backbone and Zayn may be the cracks and Harry and Louis together make up the rest, but Niall is the skin, stretching over all and keeping them together. 

Zayn - Zayn is black. Zayn will always be black, because he has been ruined by silent rejection and held-off hunger. Zayn is black because Liam is not, and Zayn has destroyed himself over something he can never have. In the most literal sense, black is the crows hair that Zayn cares for so carefully, but black is also the smoke that fills the space behind Zayn when he looks in a mirror, because there is never anyone standing with him and Zayn is alone, reaching out and not finding anyone in the dark. You sit there and you think, ‘she doesn’t know Zayn at all’ and you’re right, but do you? Does anyone? Zayn is black because he is thoughtful and intelligent and that is something no one can understand about another person, just as black is an enigma, a mystery. Black will be the color of Zayn’s blood that he will cough up in 40 years when he is filled with regrets and alcohol, on the street somewhere, unrecognizable in his tarnished and rusty splendor, a mere shadow of who he used to be. But he will still be black, even then. Zayn is black because he cannot be anything else, cannot be who he is without the stains that have ruined him, without the carefully constructed walls he has put up. Zayn is black because he is mired down in mud as dark as the night sky and there is no foreseeable way for Zayn to cleanse himself of his self-anointed scars.

Liam - Liam is brown. Liam is the earth because as Niall is the sun, warming and constant, Liam is the hard rock and the stuff that holds us, them, together. Liam is brown because so many see him as ‘boring’ and yet brown is the color that is most richly distributed across the color scale, a color that exists in many forms, each as different as the next. Liam and Louis are more similar than you think; both contain more layers and levels than the world’s tallest skyscraper. Liam needs every floor of his skyscraper to store the problems that somehow always fall on his shoulders, his study brown frame. Liam is the earth that falls in between the stones. You pick up a clod of dirt and it stays firm in your hands, measured by its edges and seemingly tough. Yet, squeeze it, watch as it crumbles into your hands and that is Liam. Liam has as many vulnerabilities as Louis, hence his need for control, his hunger to have everything placed in front of him be symmetrical and working smoothly. (Perhaps this is why Liam cannot see the black in Zayn’s eyes when he looks at him. Because Zayn’s own hunger is a hunger wild and out of control and somehow that doesn’t fit into Liam’s world and so it passes him by and he is unaware.) When Liam crumbles, he goes back to how he started, the earth that fills our canyons, and in time, he will be that clod of dirt again. Liam is brown because he is unwavering, steady in his elapsing of time, steady in his consistent nourishing. Liam evolves and he changes, but he remains Liam, he remains brown as the Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> ot5 introspective work, i guess. [also on tumblr](http://queenmcgonagall.tumblr.com/post/30691523157/and-so-they-are-painted-on-canvas)


End file.
